Case Number 20069

LOVE RANCH (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

A story about money, power, murder...and the one thing that makes the world
go round.

Opening Statement

"You should be in prison."

Facts of the Case

Grace Bontempo (Helen Mirren, The Queen) and her husband Charlie (Joe
Pesci, Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag) are the owners and operators of The
Love Ranch, the first legal brothel in the state of Nevada. Charlie serves as
the public face of the operation -- he handles all the publicity, meets and
greets the politicians, arranges all the swanky events and passes out the
cigars. Grace works behind-the-scenes -- keeping the books, managing the
employees, keeping an eye on things and handling the practicalities of the
business. Charlie and Grace's relationship has always been more of a business
arrangement than an honest-to-goodness marriage, but they've gotten by well
enough for the past 26 years.

One day, Charlie unexpectedly decides to go into business with a talented
Argentinean boxer named Armando (Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Resident Evil:
Afterlife). Charlie will pay off all of Armando's considerable gambling
debts, give him a place to train at the ranch and permit him to live there free
of charge. In exchange, Armando will do a little advertising and bring some
additional publicity to the ranch. Grace begrudgingly agrees to serve as
Armando's manager, but she's frustrated about his arrival. After all, his
presence makes her increasingly-complicated life even more complicated.

The IRS keeps asking questions about her business records, a group of
activists are attempting to ban legalized prostitution and Charlie's having an
affair with a young prostitute (Scout Taylor-Compton, The Runaways). Big
as these problems are, they all seem insignificant when Grace is informed that
she has cancer. Just as she's coming to terms with that, she learns that Armando
has romantic feelings for her. So begins a complicated tale of love, death,
politics and prostitution.

The Evidence

Taylor Hackford's Love Ranch is one kind of film for its first hour,
another kind of film in its second, and isn't particularly satisfying on either
side. There's undoubtedly a good deal of compelling drama to be found in the
story of Nevada's first legal brothel, but Love Ranch stumbles around for
the entirety of its 117-minute running time without ever finding it.

Let's start with the first hour, which details the struggles of running a
brothel in the mid-1970s. The film begins by posing the question of whether
brothels should be permitted to operate legally. There's no doubt that Love
Ranch takes a firm pro-legal prostitution point-of-view, as evidenced by its
stirring defense of the profession ("Nobody dreams of being a prostitute,
but it's a living and it beats flipping burgers,") and its paper-thin
characterization of the opposition ("God hates you and your stupid
prostitutes! You're all gonna burn in hell!"). Obviously this is a
controversial issue and there are compelling arguments to be made on both sides,
but I have to say that Love Ranch does a pretty poor job of promoting the
idea that legalized prostitution is a good thing. Its portrait of life at The
Love Ranch is pretty hellish, suggesting the women working there are forced to
service the sexual needs of grubby men around-the-clock with little rest, and
that most employees are likely to encounter some form of physical abuse at some
point. The misery depicted in the background of the film makes the scene in
which the girls rally together to defend their profession feel more than a
little false -- I believe that they'd do it, but out of fear of what their
employers might do to them otherwise.

Anyway, the straw-man arguments and the examination of life in an American
brothel is pretty much abandoned halfway through, when the film begins to focus
almost entirely on the affair between Grace and Armando. It covers the ground of
dusty old melodramas -- a handsome boxer who puts his life in danger every time
he steps in the ring, a woman torn between a young, romantic lover and a life
she's been stuck in for decades, the controlling husband who chews on cigars and
makes angry threats -- this is the stuff of cheap paperback novels, and the
skill of the actors involved isn't enough to hide that fact. Not only is the
film's second hour terribly melodramatic, but also terribly predictable. The
film's ending is supposed to be one of catharsis and triumph, I guess, but
rooted in sadness that's simply too deep to overcome.

Love Ranch was filmed in 2008, but sat on the shelf until 2010 due to
financial and legal complications. That's well enough, considering that it
officially kicked off a year loaded with films in which Helen Mirren plays
rougher than all the boys. To be sure, it's entertaining to watch the
65-year-old actress beat guys with her cane and stomp on the throats of wayward
employees, but the character seems a little thin despite the external color. The
film never really lets us in on what makes Grace tick, on why she feels so
desperately incapable of sharing her pain with Charlie or why she feels such a
strong need for revenge. Mirren does what she can with the role, but it's vastly
less compelling than her work in recent films like State of Play and
The Queen.

As for Joe Pesci...well, I would advise you not to be fooled by the cowboy
hat and Midwestern apparel, but there's no danger of that. Pesci is basically
doing Tommy DeVito and Nicky Santoro all over again, albeit with an occasionally
half-hearted attempt to disguise his distinctive accent. I've always liked
Pesci, and I was certainly excited to see him in his first major role in 12
years (only interrupted by a small cameo in The Good Shepherd), but...I
don't know. We've seen this before, and the routine nature of the screenplay
only further accentuates the fact that Pesci has played this role in other,
better films.

Peris-Menchata is sincere and pleasant in his role, but can't really do
anything to make it memorable. Gina Gershon is nearly invisible as Grace's
right-hand woman, only making an impression in a couple of scenes. Talented
supporting players like M.C. Gainey (Lost), Wendell Pierce (Treme)
and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) are wasted in throwaway roles.

Note: It's worth mentioning that the film is surprisingly restrained in
terms of sexual content. Despite featuring a brothel as its central location,
there's very little in the way of nudity or explicit sexuality. The film
deserves credit for resisting the urge to add a cheap exploitation element to
the flick -- I just wish I were able to give it credit for something more
substantial than that.

Love Ranch arrives on Blu-ray sporting a sturdy 1080p/1.78:1
transfer. While a good deal of effort has been put into capturing the subdued
midwestern glitter of the era, the transfer doesn't quite leap off the screen.
Detail is respectable most of the time (particularly facial detail), but a few
scenes seem pretty soft. Blacks are satisfactorily deep throughout. The audio is
solid, with clean, clear dialogue and a lilting, guitar-driven score by the
wonderfully-named Chris P. Bacon dominating the track. There aren't many really
explosive moments (the boxing sequence midway through is probably the most
aggressive in terms of audio, though the opening party scene comes close), but
the track gets the job done nicely. Supplements include an audio commentary with
Director Taylor Hackford, a brief introduction from Hackford and Mirren and a
handful of deleted scenes (with optional commentary).